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The Game Design of Survivor
Wired has an article looking at a game designer working in a fairly unique space: reality television. Clive Thompson discusses the game design of the show Survivor , done mostly by the show's creator Mark Burnett. From the article: "While tweaking Survivor, he closely studied John Nash's game theory in order to better engineer the hysteria and emotional blowouts of each season's finale. 'What Nash's theory predicts is that whenever you have a group of people competing, they collude to squeeze one guy out, again and again, until there's only two guys left,' Burnett notes. 'Yet when there are only two of us left, we're surprised when one of us [screws] each other over. That's the fun part. It surprised John Nash himself, but it happens every time.'"
Here's a link to one of a series of interesting articles written by someone who would disagree with that.
Survivor is the one reality show I really like, and have consistently since the first season.
It works so well, in my opinion, because of the length of the "season" and the isolation of the players. It starts out, I assume, like any other reality show; with everyone acting awkward. The loud obnoxious person making an ass of him/her-self. The shy ones hiding out in the background. But over the weeks (the show lasts 39 days i think) as the field whittles down, more of eveyone's true personality comes out and eventually I think it gets as "real" as reality tv can get.
Add to that the fact that it requires a combination of physical and mental strength to win. Winning all of the challenges will certainly get you there, so will aligning with the proper people and really manipulating them. What comes off as bitchy/asshole-ish in other reality shows, really could win you the game in Survivor.
Unfortunately I still hear a lot of people lump Survivor in with any other reality show: The Bachelor, Big Brother, American Idol. But whatever, we don't all have to like the same stuff.